Finding Joy in
Joyce:
A Readers Guide
to Ulysses
John P. Anderson
Universal Publishers/uPUBLISH.com
USA • 2000
Finding Joy in Joyce: A Readers Guide to Ulysses
Copyright © 2000 John P. Anderson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1-58112-762-6
Universal Publishers/uPUBLISH.com
USA • 2000
www.uPUBLISH.com/books/anderson2.htm
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Summary of Part I
Episode 1 (Telemachus)
Episode 2 (Nestor)
Episode 3 (Proteus)
Summary of Part II
Episode 4 (Calypso)
Episode 5 (Lotus-eaters)
Episode 6 (Hades)
Episode 7 (Aeolus)
Episode 8 (Lestrygonian)
Episode 9 (Scylla & Charybdis)
Episode 10 (Wandering Rocks)
Episode 11 (Sirens)
Episode 12 (Cyclops)
Episode 13 (Nausicaa)
Episode 14 (Oxen)
Episode 15 (Circe)
Summary of Part III
Episode 16 (Eumaeus)
Episode 17 (Ithaca)
Episode 18 (Penelope)
5
25
26
85
110
153
155
184
206
230
256
280
311
338
372
396
421
465
515
517
538
586
Epilogue
Bibliography
602
604
Figure 1 (giant S and snake god)
Figure 2 (Dancing Shiva)
614
615
3
SOURCES
To Prof. Louis Leiter, whose inspiration survived 35 years in the
desert.
To Linda, Egan and Cameron, who gave me the strength.
To Leo, for encouragement.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Excerpt (part of Figure 1) reprinted by permission of Princeton
University Press.
Photograph (figure 2) reprinted by permission of SelfRealization Fellowship Church.
THE MASTER SPEAKS:
“[copulation is not the death of the soul because] there you are dealing
with a mystery which can become anything and transform everything.
Love-making can end in love, it often does, and so its possibilities can be
limitless.”[James Joyce as reported by Arthur Powers]
4
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the most important novel of the 20th century.
Published in 1922, Joyce’s Ulysses still speaks forcefully to the subject
of the human condition through art whose appeal transcends time and
national boundaries.
The principal issue in this novel is creating individual meaning
in modern life. This continues to be the principal issue for human kind as
the 21st century opens. Stephen Dedalus, a principal character in this
novel representative of the young Joyce, has the modern disease of the
spirit, narcissism.
Joyce’s medicine for the diseased spirit is a custom blend of
self-realized individuality combined with a detached respect for the
human unity. This blend combines Jesus and Buddha, not as they have
been marketed by institutional religions but as they lived their lives as
humans. In Joyce’s blend, the respect for the unity does not limit human
possibilities. Indeed, it is designed to maximize them. Joyce’s Way to the
eternal is for each individual to maximize his or her own human
possibilities within recognition of the unity. Founded on his own
personal experience of the human condition, Joyce’s existential medicine
can provide spiritual health in the 21st century.
The sublime joy in Joyce is the art by which the levels of
existential meaning are brought forth. Many consider Joyce’s art as
seminal for modern literature. He enlarged the possibilities of prose with
revolutionary techniques and methods of coherence. And his methods
carry meaning. In Joyce’s architecture, the material is cyclical and the
part implies the whole. These patterns bear the imprint of Joyce’s views
of historical and ultimate reality: history is cyclical, and the human
condition (the part) implies the nature of the powers that be, the gods (the
whole). Joyce’s art is, in my opinion, one of the wonders of Western
civilization. My purpose is to make its power and beauty accessible to
you.
But readers beware; reading Joyce can fundamentally alter your
entire outlook on life. This is what Joseph Campbell, pre-eminent
mythographer and life long Joyce reader (may he rest in peace), said
5
about reading Joyce:
But when you are reading Joyce, what you get is
radiance. You become harmonized, and that is what
it’s about. It is not teaching you a lesson. It is feeding
you, giving you spiritual balance and spiritual
harmony.1
If you want some of that some spiritual balance and harmony, that soul
food, read on.
Magnitude of Subject and Power of Order
Joyce’s novel confronts subject matter of immense
magnitude—the nature and meaning of the human condition through the
experiences of three principal characters in Dublin during the circuit of
just one spin of the earth, about 20 hours. The subject is the human
condition, not the gay or black or Irish or female condition, but the basic
human condition. This confrontation takes place in the lives of three
intense characters: Stephen Dedalus, a most narcissistic young artist;
Leopold Bloom, a most compassionate adult; and Molly Bloom,
Leopold’s wife, a most passionate woman. Youth and adult, male and
female. Joyce’s focus through these three characters on the full tapestry
of human consciousness, not just an expurgated version, insured for this
novel both its titillating initial reception and mature continuing appeal.
Joyce’s order has immense power. Each of 18 separate episodes
of this novel is dressed in its own separate style. That style is designed
from the pattern of its individual unifying subject theme. The novel has
an independent beginning (Part I—3 episodes). The beginning leads to a
middle that looks back and forward (Part II—12 episodes). It ends with
closure (Part III—3 episodes). The plot portrays each of the three main
characters at the center of a succession of fluid moments of the here and
now surrounded by a maternal past. The names of persons, places and
streets that carry important symbolic associations are largely drawn from
actual Dublin. Through this satisfying structure, calamity moves to better
fortune in a self-reflective format—the author writes about his earlier
soul voyage that made him the author of this book.
This Guide and How to Use It
This guide is, as far as I know, unique in its attempt to give the
6
reader a rendition of the deep meaning of each part of the novel. Much of
my interpretation is totally new. Not being an academic gives me
liberties.
I suggest that after reading this Introduction, you read Ulysses
episode by episode using this guide as follows. First read the episode of
Ulysses through and don’t worry about understanding it. Just read it
through. Then read the related chapter of this guide. And finally reread
the episode, this time deeply. That’s right, it’s not going to be easy, even
with this guide. Joyce is worth the effort. Your investment will be
returned several fold.
Because the individual episodes generally stand alone, you can
have a satisfactory overall experience even if you have to lay the book
aside from time to time. The Ulysses line references in this guide are to
the Vintage Books 1986 corrected edition available in paper. Having that
edition is not necessary, however.2
The episodes of this novel are related to parts of that grand old
aristocrat, The Odyssey of Homer. The descriptions in this guide of the
related chapters3 of Homer are sufficiently detailed so that reading that
masterpiece as well should not be necessary. Homer’s hero is Odysseus,
which in Latin is Ulysses. Joyce chose his title to direct the reader to
Homer’s epic.
Since they have now been cited formally several times, let’s just
call Ulysses Ulysses or the novel and The Odyssey of Homer The
Odyssey.
Meaning
This novel is an “open work,” which even as to fundamentals is
susceptible to various supportable interpretations. The ending is
notoriously ambiguous in its implications for the Bloom future. Joyce
wanted it that way. His work, which is a paean to individuality, is what it
is to you. You can customize your own projection of the future of the
Blooms. It is designed to work that way, as an individual truth. The costs
of relativism are accepted.
The action begins on Thursday, June 16, 1904, the day Joyce
had his first “date” with Nora Barnacle, the woman to be his partner in
exile and eventually his wife for life. She reportedly “took him in hand”
7
on that first date. This novel is dedicated to the change in his life and soul
that their relationship initiated. The search for meaning in this novel must
start there. Based on my interpretation of the novel, Joyce found himself,
his fundamental creative self, through his sexual love for Nora.
Joyce’s Other Works and Interpretation of Ulysses
Joyce first wrote poems. One collection he named Chamber
Music. In the time period covered by the novel, the artist character
Stephen is still in the poetry stage. Joyce is not remembered for his
poetry, and Joyce’s critical view from maturity about his first efforts is
important in understanding the presentation of Stephen in this novel.
At various times Joyce wrote articles on intellectual subjects
now collected as The Critical Writings (CW). Some of the positions
staked out in those articles return in the attitudes assumed in writing this
novel.
Dubliners is a group of short pieces portraying spiritual
corruption in Dublin and drawing for symbolic imagery on the Catholic
Mass. That same subject and imagery appear in every other book he
wrote. Next came Stephen Hero (SH), which Joyce eventually rewrote in
tightened form as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (AP). Note
the title is A Portrait not The Portrait, emphasizing possibilities rather
than the one reading.
Joyce’s first sustained masterwork, AP is concerned with the
development of character and consciousness of one Stephen Dedalus and
is largely if not wholly autobiographical. Since the same Stephen is in
this novel, AP and SH provide important interpretive material for
Ulysses. In AP, Stephen thinks the restrictions on his self-realization
possibilities derive from Irish culture and the Catholic Church. In this
novel, which continues the story of Stephen’s maturation, he comes to
realize the real enemy is closer to home.
In preparation for writing this novel, Joyce made notes on an
episode by episode basis. The notes contain facts or ideas in highly
summary form. These are referred to as Joyce’s Notes and are obviously
important in terms of the artist’s intent.
Joyce wrote Ulysses from 1914 to 1921. During the early part of
this same period, Joyce wrote an unsuccessful play Exiles. Its subject is
8
the necessity, as part of love, to allow one’s mate to be unfaithful. Love,
like the creation of art, must derive from the freedom to choose, not
possession. This theme provides important material for the plot of this
novel, which hinges on Bloom’s reaction to his wife’s adultery. Joyce’s
explanatory notes to Exiles are particularly helpful in this regard.
Joyce’s last work, Finnegans Wake, is written largely in the
language of dreams and without significant reference to external
space/time reality. The achievements of the Wake include its own
language and magnificent internal correspondences. The closing episodes
of this novel register a gravitation pull in that direction.
Organization
This novel is organized into three parts. Part I features Stephen,
part II Leopold Bloom, often referred as just Bloom, and part III Bloom
together with Stephen and Bloom together with Molly.
The individual episodes are the jewels of this novel. Joyce’s
highest art blesses their internal organization. My explanations,
organized episode by episode, are relatively longer for the early episodes
since they set out tools for the entire novel. The Endnotes following each
section of this guide provide details.
The “traditional schemata” provided for each episode refer to
descriptions given by Joyce to Stuart Gilbert and to Carlo Linati as to his
basic structuring techniques for each episode. These schemata, often
tongue in cheek, give limited clues as to the meaning of the episode and
serve to relate one episode to another through common structuring
devices. The items in the schemata include for each episode a Greek
name to indicate the parallel chapter of The Odyssey and a particular art,
color, symbol, narrative technique and human organ.
Conceptual Structure of Episode
Each episode is based on a single concept, usually derived from
Joyce’s interpretation of the parallel chapter of The Odyssey. The
unifying concept is most accessible in the opening and closing portions
of each episode. Sometimes the unifying concept is encoded in the
episode’s first letter considered as a pictograph. In order to indicate
thematic importance, all editions published while Joyce was alive
magnified to full-page size the first letter of each part and capitalized the
9
first line of each episode.
Joyce loved to generalize, and his unifying concept for an
episode is usually a highly generalized version of the point of the related
Odyssey chapter. For example, Homer’s Sirens sing to invite Odysseus
and crew to stop at their island and retell old war stories. Joyce, in his
Sirens episode, generalizes from the specifics of retelling old war stories
to the concept of the sterility of living in the past as a special case of
repetition without redemption.
Having established a single unifying concept for an episode,
Joyce then collected into that episode as many of his own personal
experiences and as many mythical, philosophical, religious or other
cultural references as he could relate to the unifying concept, consistent
with his notions of good taste. All of these references participate in the
unifying concept. Extending in multiple dimensions and directions,
Joyce’s octopus-like sense of generalization is broad and powerful. The
Jocotopus swings far and wide.
In some cases, Joyce incorporates references by including in the
episode just some of the facts or names or incidents out of a myth. These
partials I refer to as the “Connector Facts.” They are designed to bring
the entire myth or cultural reference into the episode.
The result of Joyce’s procedure, building the episode from
materials related to one concept, is that the entire episode resonates with
the basic meaning and produces a kind of reverberation. Like a hologram,
each part of the episode implies the unifying concept of the entire
episode. In Joyce’s artistic architecture, the part implies the whole. And
this process is not accidental; this architecture carries the imprint of
Joyce’s view of ultimate reality—that the microcosm of humanity
reflects the macrocosm of the gods. Life and art, fundamentally
connected.
Art of the Episode
The episode is the format through which the author’s aesthetic
theory, presented in SH and AP, is implemented. This theory is
fundamental to understanding the art of this novel. Here is the heart of
the theory from those earlier works. Stephen gives Joyce’s aesthetic
theory using Latin terms (integritas, consonantia and quidditas)
10
borrowed from the theology of one of Joyce’s gurus, the Catholic
theologian-philosopher Thomas Aquinas:
The first phase of apprehension is a bounding line
drawn about the object to be apprehended. An esthetic
image is presented to us either in space or in time.
What is audible is presented in time, what is visible is
presented in space. But temporal or spatial, the esthetic
image is first luminously apprehended as self-bounded
and self-contained upon the immeasurable background
of space or time which is not it. You apprehended it as
one thing. You see it as one whole. You apprehend its
wholeness. That is integritas.
...
Then, said Stephen, you pass from point to point, led
by its formal lines; you apprehend it as balanced part
against part within its limits; you feel the rhythm of its
structure. In other words, the synthesis of immediate
perception is followed by the analysis of apprehension.
Having first felt that it is one thing you feel now that it
is a thing. You apprehend it as complex, multiple,
divisible, separable, made up of its parts, the result of
its parts and their sum, harmonious. That is
consonantia.
...
You see that it is that thing which it is and no other
thing. The radiance of which he speaks is the
scholastic quidditas, the whatness of a thing. This
supreme quality is felt by the artist when the esthetic
image is first conceived in his imagination. The mind
in that mysterious instant Shelley likened beautifully to
a fading coal. The instant wherein that supreme quality
of beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is
apprehended luminously by the mind which has been
arrested by its wholeness and fascinated by its harmony
is the luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure, a
11
spiritual state very like to that cardiac condition which
the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani, using a phrase
almost as beautiful as Shelley’s, called the
enchantment of the heart.4
...
. . . This is the moment which I call epiphany. First we
recognize that the object is one integral thing, then we
recognize that it is an organized composite structure, a
thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is
exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special
point, we recognize that it is that thing which it is. Its
soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its
appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the
structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant.
The object achieves its epiphany.5 [first three
paragraphs from AP and the last from SH]
Now this is fairly serious stuff. You don’t have to plumb its depths right
now, but you may want to revisit these principles of analysis as you go
along episode by episode. Note the source of Joyce’s aesthetics principles
in theology. Acquinas used these terms in connection with a description
in the Trinity of the Second Person, the Son. Acquinas used the terms
“blaze of being” and “certain splendor” to describe quidditas or
epiphany. Joyce will use these same ideas in describing the creation of
art. Joyce’s connection of art to theology is not accidental.
Measure each episode according to these principles. Joyce
designed his episodes to be apprehended as art objects in and of
themselves, not as images of space-time or emotional reality. Consider
each episode as the bounded object you apprehend. The parts to be
related to each other and to the whole include the subject, narrative style,
symbolic subtext, texture and atmosphere produced by the narrator or
narrators and the degree of realism used in the presentation. The radiance
or epiphany of the overall effect is successful only if the reader manages
a deep penetration of the meaning. The epiphany is usually the unifying
concept for the episode.
12
Proper Art
In terms of Joyce’s objectives, his theory of proper and
improper art is instructive:
The tragic emotion [result of proper art], in fact, is a
face looking two ways, towards terror and towards
pity, both of which are phases of it. You see I use the
word arrest. I mean that the tragic emotion is static. . .
.The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire
or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to
something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from
something. The arts which excite them, pornographical
or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic
emotion (I used the general term) is therefore static.
The mind is [by proper art] arrested and raised above
desire and loathing.6 [material added]
Note the emphasis on aesthetic arrest, which raises the mind “above
desire and loathing.” Consider preliminarily the common aspects shared
by aesthetic arrest and general Buddha-like detachment, in whose gentle
arms the ego-induced emotions of aggression and desire are arrested.
The emphasis on proper (static) and improper (kinetic) is in
relation to art—what is proper to or the property of art. For example,
advertising, which just happens to be Bloom’s business, would by
necessity be kinetic or pornographic under this definition since it is
designed to create desire for the advertised product.
Since pity and terror are proper effects of art but their near
relatives desire and loathing are not, the definitions of pity and terror are
key:
Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the
presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human
sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer. Terror
is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of
whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings
and unites it with the secret cause.7
The phrase “grave and constant” means what is “irremediable” or
inherent in the human condition; and the “secret cause” refers to
13
inevitable death of humans, the ground of all that is grave and constant in
human sufferings.8 These grave and constant aspects of the human
condition are the mortar in Joyce’s art. This is the material with which he
intends to connect with the reader. This is the principal Joyce subject
matter, the eternal aspects of the human condition which transcend time,
culture and locale.
These academic concepts are critical to understanding the
subtleties of this novel because they indicate what Joyce is trying to
accomplish. Notice that pity and terror, the static emotions produced by
tragedy, inherently involve a connection or unification with other
humans—uniting with the human sufferer or uniting with the secret
cause. As a consequence, an assumption of some sort of human unity is
built into the very foundation of Joyce’s theory of literary art.
This human unity is the common ground where the artist
Stephen and the compassionate Bloom meet. This is also the common
ground where Joyce meets his reader. The human condition, the natural
human condition, is Joyce’s subject, not the latest whims or hot subjects.
That is why his art lives on and on through time and crosses language
boundaries.
And these basic concepts of proper art translate into important
lessons as to the proper method of literary composition. They suggest
how to do it to get the right result. Here are the lessons as to proper
composition method issued by Stephen for Joyce in AP:
Even in literature, the highest and most spiritual art, the
forms are often confused. The lyrical form is in fact the
simplest verbal vesture of an instant of emotion. . . . He
who utters it is more conscious of the instant of
emotion than of himself as feeling emotion. The
simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical
literature when the artist prolongs and broods upon
himself as the centre of an epical event and this form
progresses till the centre of emotional gravity is
equidistant from the artist himself and from others. The
narrative is no longer purely personal. The personality
of the artist passes into the narration itself, flowing
14
round and round the persons and the action like a vital
sea. . . .The dramatic form is reached when the vitality
which has flowed and eddied round each person fills
every person with such vital force that he or she
assumes a proper and intangible esthetic life. The
personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a
mood and then a fluid and lambent narrative, finally
refines itself out of existence, impersonalises itself, so
to speak. The esthetic image in the dramatic form is life
purified in and reprojected from the human
imagination. The mystery of esthetic like that of
material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the
God of the creation, remains within or behind or
beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out
of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.9
In other words, the detached, restrained dramatic form is best. In
that mode, the characters have independent existence on their own terms.
The author does not possess them in order to make a personal statement
for or against something; the actions of the characters are born of their
own nature. The author frees his characters from the author’s own
subjectivism and in an impersonal process creates more possibilities. Is
this beginning to sound like unconditional love? Following this line of
association, the detached charity or compassion of the Buddha and Jesus
would be the counterpart of the dramatic mode in art.
In the dramatic mode, the object of the writing is presented only
in relation to itself. Explanatory lead-ins and background information are
intentionally omitted. The author shows but doesn’t show and tell.
Nothing is spelled out, and the reader must participate to supply the
missing pieces. Objects, characters and thoughts are presented
objectively, just as they appear in real life. Characters are only in the
immediate present. They may remember the past or project into the
future but they do so from the present. These characteristics make the
material hard to come by, but ultimately satisfying.
By contrast, the romantic lyrical mode is guided by the artist’s
self-indulgence and is an immature pursuit of beauty and truth. In that
15
mode, the end product is slave to the author’s emotional subjectivism and
agenda. For this reason, the end product does not have access to the
unlimited possibilities that flourish only in artistic independence. In this
novel, the intentional use of improper tools by Joyce is a signal to look
for limitations in the characters or their behavior in that episode. The
style used by Joyce serves as a metaphor for a particular mentality.
The most basic human passions propel the plot of this novel.
Indeed, the summary reads much like a daily soap opera—artist Stephen
struggles for freedom and human connections, compassionate Bloom is
cuckolded and hot-blooded Molly has her first sex in many years. The
curve of this plot of passions is shaped by Joyce’s theory of proper art.
During the course of this novel, the characters change in the direction of
the human psychological equivalents of the dramatic literary mode that
produces arrest. Life and art, art and life.
Proper Art and the Reader
So much for the artist. But what’s in it for you the reader? What
is this about your soul being transformed?
The detached artist produces art that can arrest the reader. This
arrest is a kind of fascination that “stops the clock.” The reader must be
receptive and open to possibilities in order to have this kind of
experience. In this fascinated state, the reader leaves his or her normal
ego state, which is characterized by a sense of separation, isolation and
emptiness and which is standard equipment for many materially
successful persons. In fascinated arrest, this ego state collapses, at least
for a moment.
Leaving the ego state, the arrested reader enters a new realm in
which detachment and a special sense of individuality and unity prevail.
That’s right—individuality and unity. In the right dimensions, they are
mutually supportive, not opposites. The sense of individuality is intense,
nurtured by the companion sense of unity. This is a soul altering
experience for many, an experience of greater depth of existence. Don’t
be put off by the fact that several previous attempts to reach this same
ground have been rather tawdry. And it is no coincidence that the effect
of Joyce’s art is a prescription for Joyce’s existential medicine for life.
Because of the power of the art, the reader unites with the
16
human sufferer or the secret cause, and the reader’s soul is changed in
proportion to the strength of the detachment.10 Here’s Joseph Campbell
talking about Joyce’s notions of dramatic art and aesthetic arrest in
Buddhist terms (the Buddha was known as the one “thus come”):
. . . And whenever anything is experienced that way,
simply in and for and as itself, without reference to any
concepts, relevancies, or practical relationships, such a
moment of sheer aesthetic arrest throws the viewer
back for an instant upon his own existence without
meaning; for he too simply is—“thus come”—a vehicle
of consciousness, like a spark flung out from a fire.11
Read Joyce and you can feel the Buddha. And by the way, the Buddha
can reach the suburbs. He is not put off by nice yards and big houses.
Art and the Gods
One of Stephen’s main concerns in this novel is the relationship
of the individual, particularly the artist, to the forces of the macrocosm,
to the gods.12 The artist has, Joyce believed, a particular interest in this
issue because the artist must reach the eternal domain of the gods in order
to produce the highest art. That which is grave and constant in the human
condition necessarily involves, in this view, the issue of the relation of
the cosmic forces operative in our universe to our brief individual human
passage in and out of energy consciousness. Act One in this drama is the
subject of the legend of the Fall in the Garden of Eden, the last time the
Big Guy and the little guys were together. That legend, bathed in Joycean
interpretations, is an important construct in this novel.
In the case of Joyce as reflected in Stephen, the two institutional
religious controllers of this relationship of the macrocosm with the
individual microcosm were (1) from his upbringing, the Roman Catholic
Church and (2) from his readings in the then popular Theosophical
movement and the powerful writings of Hegel and Schopenhaeur, the
transcendental Hindu/Buddhist traditions. The Catholic Church controller
offered a brokered, indirect and guilt oriented relationship with a distant
god, definitely a second-hand, second-best experience. The
Hindu/Buddhist traditions promised the divine spark in everyone but
emphasized passivity and caste in the face of inevitable suffering in life.
17
As traditionally depicted by his institutional representatives, Christ is
hanging on the cross and the Buddha is in passive position, lying down.
Both of these traditions protected the faithful from suffering but
at the cost of restricted possibilities. The Catholics offer protection from
suffering at the cost of guilt. Joyce rejected this trade-off because guilt
corrodes and reduces the spirit whereas suffering increases human
possibilities. The Hindu/Buddhist tradition offered a way to avoid
suffering but at the cost of passivity and caste. Joyce rejected passivity
because, as he might have put the point, the Buddha lying down all the
time misses most of life.
Joyce cherry-picked from both of these sources in developing a
customized spiritual approach to life that made sense to him and which is
expressed in this novel through Stephen and Bloom. In his quest for
maximum self-realization, Stephen gravitates away from the institutional
religious controllers and back to the genuine original articles, Jesus and
Buddha as they lead their lives, Jesus and Buddha as humans. They are
viewed as radical apostles of profound personal experience and personal
illumination, proponents of growth of soul or self-realization. In addition,
since Joyce found kindred concepts in Tantric Yoga, images from that
tradition are used throughout the novel.
Joyce practices metaphysics in this novel and equates the divine
with potential. The essence of “being” and of god is more possibilities,
not just in the human realm but in nature and evolution. That which
promotes more human possibilities is sacred and that which restricts
human possibilities is profane. More possibilities in art and more
possibilities in life. For Joyce, god is in the possibilities.
In the first episodes, Stephen struggles against the forces of
restriction that limit possibilities. In the last episode, we are given a
glimpse of the sacred realm of possibilities through the fluid thoughts of
Molly as earthmother. With this ending, the liberating Flow of the
Mothers replaces the restrictive Law of the Fathers.
Joyce’s ultimate philosophy is based on the human, the natural
human not the hair shirt ascetic human. If the image of god is reflected in
humans, it must be reflected in what is most natural to humans. What is
most natural is most god-like. And for Joyce the most natural human
18
functions are the sexual instinct and the creative imagination. In his life,
these functions came bearing the most energy. When liberated from selfindulgence, these functions serve as portals to expanded perception, to
Joyce’s gods. In their mature form, their core is impersonal, reflective of
the distant Father recumbent in the void.
The Soul, The Mass and The Trinity
Elements of Ulysses are framed on the Catholic concepts of the
Mass and the relation of the Father and Son in the Trinity. Joyce
approaches these concepts as attempts to understand the relation of man’s
soul to possibilities and to the gods, not as dry speculation on the nature
of the godhead. Joyce approaches the gods as the sum of all forces in the
universe but, unlike the trend of current theories, treats the creation of
mankind as an important event. By the way, I use the terms god and
gods with and without capitalization as interchangeable terms.
The Mass is necessary, in the view of the Catholic Church,
because the only possible portal for the connection of humans to god is a
humiliating sense of sin, separation from and loss of god, and the
corresponding constant need for renewal. The Mass, the Catholic
instrument of change, is used throughout this novel as a structuring
device to frame the changes in Stephen.13 But Joyce uses the Catholic
Mass in a way to point out its failure as a passport to the universal
powers. Joyce’s human mass is used to elevate the real and liberating
connections that he believed humans share with the universal powers, the
creative imagination and the sexual instinct.
The Trinity is the Catholic Church’s version of the relationship
of god to humans. The Father created the universe and sent His likeness
the Son into the world of time and space in the Incarnation, and together
they send the Holy Spirit into human hearts. Joyce, following the lead of
St. Augustine, brings the Trinity into the human soul. Indeed, Joyce will
find in the different theories of the Trinity analogies for Stephen’s
youthful self-indulgence and more mature self-realization.
Vico Patterns
The cyclical theories of history of Giambattista Vico, an 18th
Century Italian philosopher, provide important patterns for this novel.
Vico viewed as inevitable four stages of history: (1) mythical age of the
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gods or theocratic (2) heroic or aristocratic (3) human or secular and (4)
chaotic to be followed by a recorso, a return to the first stage. Each Vico
stage has a language, character, jurisprudence and method of reasoning in
tune with a basic mind set.14 In this system, language and history are
parts of the same whole. In this system, you will sense the fundamentals
that historical reality is cyclical and the part implies the whole.
The parts of this novel are sequenced by reference to the Vico
cycle. In Part I, the first episode reflects attempts by the theocratic forces
to control Stephen’s soul, the second episode presents a similar attempt
by mock heroes and commercial aristocracy, and the third episode is
ruled by the thoughts of Stephen, his own secular productions. Part II is
built on the chaotic stage and a recorso in the movements of Bloom, the
wandering Jew. He starts at home, leaves and returns. The Vico cycle
repeats in an artistic dimension in the last three episodes of Part III, as the
three step sequence governs the basic mindset of the narrator.
Bible Connections
The Bible, like The Odyssey, is an important structuring device
for Ulysses. Like the Bible, this novel is written largely in the literary
language of myth and metaphor,15 is an open work with several
meanings,16 and presents existential wisdom with an emphasis on human
concerns.17 One central myth of the Bible is deliverance, from the Exodus
of the Old Testament (OT) to the redemption promised by Christ’s
crucifixion in the New Testament (NT).18 Likewise, in the novel both
Stephen and Bloom are delivered to an increased freedom and an
enlarged view of the possible dimensions of life. In addition, the
progression of styles in this novel tracks the movement in the Bible from
the more realistic, more historically “world” oriented OT to the more
spiritual “word” oriented NT.19 This novel, like the Bible, moves from
the objective to the self-referential.
Joyce uses several biblical characters in this novel, particularly
the Jewish prophet Elijah. He figures prominently, both on the surface
and in the coil springs of the plot. As the master of transitions, Elijah
charts courses in a novel about redemptive changes.
In attempting to create a modern sacred text, Joyce co-opted the
primary technique used by the NT authors and editors to bind the NT to
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the OT. 20 This technique is known as typology (types that share traits in
common). The NT was apparently constructed so that events in the NT
would be viewed as “fulfilling” the events in the OT, as Christ came to
“fulfill” the Jewish Law. The typological method of interpretation of
scripture was developed by early Church fathers, such as Chrysostomos
who shows up in Stephen’s very first thought in the novel.
In this system, as interpreted by Eric Auerbach:
Figural interpretation establishes a connection between
two events or persons in such a way that the first
signifies not only itself but also the second, while the
second involves or fulfills the first. The two poles of a
figure (the two events) are separated in time, but both,
being real events or persons, are within temporality.
They are both contained in the flowing stream which is
historical life, and only the comprehension . . . of their
interdependence is a spiritual act . . . .
This type of interpretation obviously introduces an
entirely new and alien element into the antique
conception of history . . . . a connection is established
between two events which are linked neither
temporally nor causally—a connection which it is
impossible to establish by reason in the horizontal
dimension. . . . It can be established only if both
occurrences are vertically linked to Divine Providence,
which alone is able to devise such a plan of history and
supply the key to its understanding. The horizontal,
that is the temporal and causal, connection of
occurrences is dissolved; the here and now is no longer
a mere link in an earthly chain of events, it is
simultaneously something which has always been, and
which will be fulfilled in the future; and strictly, in the
eyes of God, it is something eternal; . . . .21
Joyce uses the typological technique throughout this novel.
Joyce believed that in order to have maximum power, his art must both
rest in the concrete here and now and reach by symbolism to the eternal
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beyond. In this emphasis, it shares fundamentals with typology. But in
his use of this technique, Joyce replaces the Church fathers’ vertical
dimension of divine reality with his own version of the structure of
divine reality. In his view, the vertical dimension of ultimate reality is
self-realization because self-realization is the only human path to divine
proximity. Moreover, Joyce uses the typological technique in a degrading
sort of way in order to undermine the Church’s “Law of the Fathers,” the
sense of the Law as an external source of control and personal
justification.22
This novel is also full of other concepts that share fundamental
traits with Biblical typology. In reincarnation, a favorite Joyce subject, a
previous soul is reborn in a new body. The experience in the new body,
influenced by karma, gives new meaning to the results of the prior life.
Through Joyce’s abundant use of Dante and Shakespeare, their works are
given new meaning in Dublin and “fulfilled” in the intensification of
modern consciousness. Art in general fulfills prior experience on which
the artist based the art. The soul, as expounded by Stephen, reads
backward as an expression of prior experience and forward as the
potential for the future. These similar concepts, like typology, do not
operate on the basis of cause and effect or logic.
In the end, for Joyce the associations and connections resulting
from the typological and similar processes become values in themselves.
Compassion and connections. His revelations in the human realm
become open-ended. As Iris Murdoch has one of her characters say, “The
good feel being as a total dense mesh of tiny interconnections.”
Interestingly, this approach foreshadows the current model of the
quantum connectedness of the entire universe.
Stephen, Bloom and Molly as Joyce
Stephen and Bloom started out in Joyce’s mind as parts of
himself— young and older, idealistic and practical, artistic and scientific,
and centrifugal and centripetal. Then Joyce gave them artistic life in the
dramatic mode and independent action in the story line. While they
function as independent characters, they remain connected through the
text by common experiences, dreams and thoughts. Ultimately, they
connect through Molly, who represents a magnified version of Joyce’s
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experience with Nora.
In symbolic association, Stephen generally represents a version
of Jesus and Bloom a version of Moses. Together they share a version of
the Buddha and Dante, both of whom were exiled, highly individualized
and giving (Dante means the “giver”). Molly represents the feminine
principle in all its manifestations: temptress, mate and earthmother.
These symbolic associations are not fixed and bend and merge
throughout the novel.
Notice that all three main characters have had fractured family
experiences. Bloom lost his father to suicide, Stephen his mother to
cancer and Molly her mother to desertion. They all have what has
become a very modern problem, as individual liberty has fed selfishness.
Joyce’s family life was fractured by his selfish father’s spendthrift habits,
drunkenness and lack of support for the individual development of his
many children. During Joyce’s youth, their family fell from the garden of
respectability and inherited financial independence to the hardship of
poverty. Joyce’s mother died of cancer (on August 13, 1903) when Joyce
was 21, basically worn out from child bearing and family stress. As the
novel opens, Stephen is still, ten months and three days later on June 16,
1904, in mourning over her death and feeling guilty as a result of
refusing her deathbed call for submission to her Catholic faith.
Attitude
This Book is full of playfulness and humor, some of it quite
juvenile. And as for the basic purpose of it all, comedy and joy are the
summit of art:
For desire urges us from rest that we may possess
something, but joy holds us in rest so long as we
possess something. . . . All art which excites in us the
feeling of joy is so far comic and according as this
feeling of joy is excited by whatever is substantial or
accidental in human fortunes the art is to be judged
more or less excellent: and even tragic art may be said
to participate in the nature of comic art so far as the
possession of a work of tragic art (a tragedy) excites in
us the feelings of joy.23
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Joy produced by arrest—that’s the right stuff.
Read on and find the Joy in Joyce.
*************
ENDNOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Campbell, J. Mythic Worlds, Modern Words (New York: Harper
Collins, 1933) p. 272.
For help with unfamiliar places and names, Gifford, D. Ulysses
Annotated (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) is
excellent, but it is not needed for a basic understanding of the novel.
The divisions of Homer are actually called Books, but I use the term
chapter to avoid confusion.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: Viking Press,
1956) pp. 212-213. This work is hereinafter referred to as AP.
Stephen Hero (New York: New Directions, 1944) p. 213. Thomas
Aquinas used these three Latin terms to describe the Second Person
in the Trinity; Joyce, for reasons which will become clear, found that
source most appropriate for a description of apprehending art. Watch
for the images of the Son and artist to be joined.
AP, p. 205.
AP, p. 204.
Joyce, J. The Critical Writings edit. by E. Mason and R. Ellmann
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959) p. 144. This work is
hereinafter referred to as CW.
AP, pp. 214-215.
Frye, N. Words with Power Being a Second Study of The Bible and
Literature (San Diego, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990) p. 71.
This work is hereinafter referred to as Frye II.
Myths to Live By (New York: Penguin Books, 1972) p. 137.
In the interests of even-handedness, I will not capitalize references to
deities unless required by the context.
For all the detailed information concerning the Mass, see Lang, F.
Ulysses and the Irish God (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press,
24
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
1993).
Klein, M. A Shout in the Street (New Directions) pp. 327-345.
Frye II, p. 99.
Frye, N. The Great Code The Bible and Literature (San Diego,
Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1990) p. 65. This Book is hereinafter
referred to as Frye I.
Frye I, p. 67.
Frye I, p. 50.
Restuccia, F. Joyce and the Law of the Father (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989) p. 53.
For the material in this and next paragraph, see Restuccia p. 20 et.
seq.
Auerbach, E. Mimesis The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953) p. 73.
Restuccia, p. 20 et. seq.
Paris Notebook as quoted in Kenner, H. Dublin’s Joyce
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956) p. 156.
Part I – Summary
Part I introduces Stephen Dedalus, a young and self-absorbed
artist with a fragmented soul and primed for a change. This is the same
Stephen from AP and generally representative of the young Joyce. This
initial focus on Stephen and his narcissism prepares for a marked contrast
with our unlikely but compassionate and integrated hero, Leopold
Bloom, who is generally representative of the older Joyce. The zone
between the younger and the more mature Joyce, the zone of change, is
the terrain of this novel.
The three episodes of Part I are related to the first chapters of
The Odyssey that focus on Telemachus, the young son of Odysseus. The
narrative in Joyce’s first three episodes proceeds chronologically through
the morning. Part II will revert to the same hours covered by Part I. By
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